Is This Me?

I’ve been sticking to my beliefs (I don’t want to say plan as that feels like a new set of rules to replace the diet rules I have lived by for years). I have been thinking less about food, I have been challenging myself when I find myself thinking about eating for reasons other than hunger, working out what’s going on, I am eating less but eating more of what I want, I am enjoying food.

It all sounds so positive but the thing I am still struggling with is the way I look. I understand the need to accept myself the way I am, to live my life now, rather than waiting until I reach some magical weight where everything will be fantastic. I dress well, I do my hair, wear make-up, but, if I am totally honest, there is still a voice inside of me calling me horrible names, decrying the size of my body, not loving myself the way I should, or the way I need to so that I can be happy.

How can I get around this? If I tell the truth I thought that when I embarked on this way of being that I would end up smaller, I would feel liberated around food and fit into the smallest pair of jeans I had ever owned. I understand the principles, I buy into them, but in the corner of my mind (and it’s quite a big corner really) I keep wanting to be smaller, to feel petite, to look differently. This has all come into my mind as diets are pushed so much at this time of year. I feel tempted: maybe a few weeks on the 5:2 and then I can come back to this? I could just get down to my target weight and then go back to what I know and understand is the only long-term solution: accepting myself, eating when I am hungry. I want to accept the current me, stop yearning for another, slimmer version, so how do I do that?

I am working on a programme for people like me (Happy in Your Own Skin) but how can I work with people when all this fills my mind, why can’t I just accept myself? Or maybe this constant ongoing struggle keeps me connected with people trying to do the same things I am?

Running away from ghosts

The trouble with dieting is it haunts you and continues to haunt you even when you give it up (or try to give it up). There are constant reminders: the scales in the bathroom daring you to jump on for a moment (what are you afraid of?), the snacks I need to have in the house as I’m not on a diet but they keep calling to me and worst of all the nasty thoughts that keep circulating in my mind that if I don’t watch it I am going to end up in a huge tent of a dress, the kind of woman that gets laughed at in the street with my ever-expanding backside. My logical brain will tell me that even if I ate 24 hours a day it would take ages to get to that stage but every time I feel I take my eye off myself I worry that I am skittering along, out of control, destined to be an awful sight, to be laughed at, mocked. It feels frightening but I know I can’t go back, I can’t live the rest of my life on this hideous merry-go-round, this sad obsession with how I look, what I eat and yet I can’t leave it behind.

I can tell you what I eat every day. I am getting better at identifying hunger but I seem to have forgotten leaving food on my plate. I am trying to make it natural but the old habits seem so deeply carved into me that I have to keep vigilant, keep watching: there’s no-one out of control around here, understand? So I’m trying to eat unconsciously naturally but at the moment I feel in a permanent (well almost permanent) panic about what I am eating, why I am eating it and where I will end up. It feels depressing but I know I have to keep soldering on down this road but it feels lonely and windswept, it feels like there are creatures lurking behind the trees waiting to jump out and frighten me, with my own fears. I am struggling.